Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in America’s Global War on Terror by Rebecca A. Adelman (review)

In Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in America’s Global War on Terror, Rebecca Adelman examines citizenship as “visual engagement” in the aftermath of the war on terror through an interdisciplinary framework that weaves together visual culture studies, trauma studies, political philosophy, and American studies (p. 2). Citizenship has five major visual modalities: illuminating, dimensional, diagnostic, temporal, and juridical. The author dedicates a chapter to each of these visual practices and ties them back together in the conclusion under a discussion of the visual apparatus of the airport checkpoint.

Adelman takes on the role of photographs as illuminators in chapter 1, and argues that activists have used access to visual information as a key motivator for engaged citizens, as “informed citizens will hold the state accountable” (p. 21). Spectatorship here is seen as independent of content—in other words what matters is that visual secrecy is dispelled rather than what the new visual transparency reveals. She investigates this illuminating strategy by focusing on two case studies: the Abu Ghraib prison torture photographs and the censorship on photographing the coffins of the fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The author juxtaposes media activists against the dominant media portrayal of these events, which was in turn shaped by state policy. The Abu Ghraib photographs as well as their uptake could have been more productively discussed in relation to participatory digital culture, as this is the environment in which they were produced, disseminated, and reconfigured. While Adelman questions the use of the Abu Ghraib photographs by activists and scholars as “illuminators” of the behind-the-scenes of war and thus motivators of antiwar action, she could benefit from exploring the larger public use of these images.

Chapter 2 examines the ways in which the state has endorsed a “flattened affect” in response to terror in visual culture through a comparative study of the simulation for the 9/11 memorial Reflecting Absence, the virtual environment Virtual 9/11 for PTSD first responders, and the Flat-World training simulator for U.S. troops, as well as the Flat Mommies and Flat Daddies projects (p. 63). This idea of flat affect carries out throughout the rest of the book. In chapter 3 Adelman provides an extensive analysis of the modulation of affect that the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Rating Administration has enacted with regard to the portrayal of terror in a wide range of Hollywood-produced films. Next, flatness is connected to temporalities of terror, war, and the state as they are represented in popular television shows such as 24.

Chapter 5 engages the case of Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who had been charged with treason over his participation in al-Qaeda videos. This chapter most lucidly demonstrates the importance of visual practices as means through which the states defines citizenship—in the case of Gadahn, the indictment is not of the person, but rather of his image (p. 187). Adelman shows that faced with the evasiveness of terrorism, the state finds its potency in an attempt to control the images that emerge from the war on terror.

I found the book’s title a bit misleading in setting up an expectation of more in-depth engagement with the question of surveillance: the introduction and conclusion deal with this topic, while the rest of the book shies away. Overall, Adelman offers an extensive investigation of the American visual culture of the war on terror that is rich in both breath and depth. The visual practices of the Global War on Terror are examined across a wide variety of media texts. Additionally, the author provides relevant genealogies of visual practices, effectively historicizing them. This book thus makes a significant contribution.